


Siblinghood

by broken_lunchbox



Category: Dexter's Laboratory
Genre: Apologies, Autistic Character, Blankets, Comfort, Regret, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 05:48:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19661086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broken_lunchbox/pseuds/broken_lunchbox
Summary: Dee Dee destroys another one of her brother's inventions, and he didn't react how she thought he would ...





	Siblinghood

**Author's Note:**

> this is extremely delayed and i feel awful but here have some good sibling bonding. 
> 
> i always really liked the dynamic Dexter and Dee Dee have because it related to me on a personal level and i feel like so much more could have been explored in their relationship as brother and sister.
> 
> i've been procrastinating for a long time on this one, and now that i'm done i can finally sleep   
> for another 8000 years : 0)

She knew that breaking things wasn’t something to be proud of. 

She had been repeatedly been taught the Golden Rule for years, and she was getting a little tired of it. Of course Dee Dee knew people didn’t like getting their stuff broken, especially if it was important stuff. If someone had gone and destroyed her ever growing collection of plush toys or ruined the hair on her dollies, she would be rightfully upset as well.

But there was just some thrill in wreaking havoc on her little brother’s inventions and chemical potions. The fact was that no matter how hard he tried, Dexter could not prevent her from getting into his laboratory and destroying his work. He couldn’t go to his parents to complain or get his stupid sister grounded for her destruction; because they weren’t supposed to know that he even had a lab in the first place. It was the perfect lose-lose situation.

The blonde considered her unwanted involvement in Dexter’s work as just punishment for each time he insulted her lack of intelligence or each time he spurned to join her in playing together. 

Dee Dee remembered being around six years old when she had gone to her parents and huffed in frustration when Dexter had locked himself up in his room again and refused to partake in tea time with her toys. Her father and mother had sat down with her in the kitchen and explained to Dee Dee her brother’s insociable behavior. They had used words she didn’t understand at the time like “disorder” and “spectrum”, and she was left more confused than she was before. So her little brother had something up with his brain? And that meant he couldn’t play with her? It didn’t make a lick of sense.

Dee Dee didn’t understand why her brother got so worked up over his precious science junk. If he was the “boy genius” he claimed he was, then Dexter could easily remake anything she had broken in a matter of hours. He always had the worst temper.

She never understood how much her playfulness was affecting him until after what had happened recently.

* * *

She was bouncing around the lab as usual, with Dexter chasing her around trying to stop her destruction. Unfortunately for the young scientist, his short legs couldn’t compete with Dee Dee’s graceful bounds. The girl was bouncing around until she screeched to a halt in front of an ornate and very delicate-looking machine, sitting atop a cool platform. It appeared as if like a magical pedestal, holding a sacred artifact in its center. The platform was right in the middle of a vertical cavern of metal and wires, and if one were to look over the ledge, they would see a deep, black hole staring back at them. With a mischievous grin she gently pressed a finger against the machine, sending it toppling over the edge and watching it fall down, down, down the seemingly bottomless pit. Dee Dee wasn’t sure if she even heard it crash. 

“Wow! You’re definitely not gonna get that back!” Dee Dee exclaimed, pointing into the darkness.

She already knew Dexter was next to her, standing stock still as he stared down with her into the inky blackness. She couldn’t see his face, their height difference and Dexter’s low hanging head blocking his face from view. He didn’t move, didn’t shout, didn’t shake his fist in fury demanding her to get out. The boy genius just just stood there, not saying a word. It made Dee Dee feel uneasy.

Then Dee Dee heard soft sniffles coming from her young brother, and her normally large smile slowly fell off her face.

“Dexter? Are you okay?”

The blonde squat down to her sibling’s height to try and see Dexter’s expression, but his head was hanging so low the boy’s face was hidden in the collar of his lab coat. She affectionately put her hand on the small of his back, retracting it immediately when she saw her brother stiffen. She kept forgetting how much he wasn’t a fan of unwanted physical contact, especially when he had moments like this. Then Dee Dee heard her brother’s voice, which was unusually free of his faux accent, faintly mumble into his collar;

“Dee Dee ... could please leave me alone ...”

His words were steady and gentle, less of a question and more of a soft order. His voice was just barely above a whisper, and yet the words hit Dee Dee like a giant wrecking ball.

She was racked with guilt. She can only recall a few times she had seen him so distraught, and never to the point of being near mute. She thought about her brother’s emotions, remembering way back when her parents explained the details of Dexter’s condition to her. He didn’t show emotions the same way she did, sometimes not showing them at all. She couldn’t even begin to think about what was going on inside that big head of his. Dee Dee felt absolutely horrible, and paced around her pink room thinking of what to do. 

Could she make a card? No, that wouldn’t sound genuine enough. Could she talk to her parents? Obviously no, she had made her promise to Dexter long ago that they would keep his laboratory a secret. Maybe she should just leave him alone for now, and the whole thing would blow over in a few days. Yes, Dexter would go back to yelling and chasing her out of his while Dee Dee went on prancing and singing and destroying his work. But she’d still have that feeling, that aching, dull pain in her gut that would never go away.

None of these options were good enough. Dee Dee knew what she had to do.

* * *

The blonde girl stood in front of the inconspicuous bookcase, yanking the false book on one of the shelves that opened to the laboratory. As she entered through the vaulted doors, she made sure to gently walk around the various beakers and whirring computers and other random technology she was sure Dexter had a name for. Dee Dee didn’t want to break anything (this time) and she struggled with keeping her hands to herself despite the strong allure to touch anything with uncountable buttons and levers.

She searched around the seemingly unending maze of the lab in search of a small head of ginger curls. She looked near giant gizmos, peeked behind weird thingamabobs and gazed around some other fancy-shmancy contraptions. The blonde had even stopped a few robots who were working around the lab to ask if they knew her brother’s whereabouts.

At last she had found Dexter at one of his many workstations, leaning over the desk with a large blueprint plan on it. A desk lamp shone faintly in the already bright laboratory, pencils and compasses and notepads filled with equations were squeezed onto the small area of the desk. Dee Dee stood sheepishly and wrung her hands, not wanting to disturb him but desperately wanting to get this apology out of the way.

“Hey, um, Dexter? I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for ruining that machine of yours. I don’t even know what it was, but I knew you were upset about it ...”

There was no response.

“I’m serious! I know I break your stuff all the time, but you were really really sad and I just wanna apologize for it. Are you okay?”

Silence.

Was that nerd really giving her the cold-shoulder when she was trying to be genuine?

Dee Dee was getting annoyed. She was moments away from huffing and walking away when she noticed the steady rise and fall of his body against the desk, accompanied with soft noises escaping his lips. Tiptoeing to the side of his workbench, she leaned over to look at her brother’s face squished onto the desk.

His thick framed glasses were askew on his face. He leaned onto the crook of his arm as he snored blissfullly. Dee Dee giggled a little at the tiny puddle of drool near his mouth. It didn’t surprise her that Dexter had fallen asleep; the ginger was known to be a workaholic when it came to his projects. 

Well, there went Dee Dee’s plan to apologize. She could just wake up her brother, but doing so would put him in a bad mood, which in turn would make him unwilling to hear her sincerity. The blonde pondered for a moment about what she would do. She then looked down at the partially finished blueprints and her brother shivering in the cold lab air, and got an idea.

* * *

Dexter awoke suddenly, pulling his sleepy mind back into reality.

“I’m awake!-”

The boy genius looked around his surroundings, even though he knew he was still in his laboratory. Shoving hands under his glasses to wipe the crust away from his eyes, Dexter looked at his watch for the time. 

4:36 pm. Had he really been asleep for 2 hours? The ginger made a mental note to go to bed early and stop drinking so much coffee, a promise he knew in spite of himself he wouldn’t commit to. Dexter gently smacked his freckled cheeks in an attempt to jolt his nerves, forcing his body to wake up from his nap. He felt a piece of fuzzy fabric fall from his narrow shoulders onto the lab floor. When had he gotten a blanket?

Dexter remembered the blueprints for his new thermonuclear module. He had been working on this design for weeks now and he was so close to finishing it; that is until Dee Dee went and dropped it into oblivion. It was one of the boy’s bigger projects, and to see one of his works be effortless destroyed made his heart break. He picked up his pencil to continue sketching, but stopped when he saw this blueprint covered in glittering pink writing. The ginger grinded his teeth in frustration, knowing full well who the culprit was, seething his sister’s name through his clenched jaw like a horrid obscenity. However, just as Dexter was about to crumple the paper and throw it out, he found himself reading the pretty cursive words on the print. 

__

Dear Dexter,  
I’m sorry I broke your machine thingy!  
You were really upset and I felt bad about it,  
so to make up for it I drew a picture of us!  
From Dee Dee.

__  


Beneath it was a crude drawing of Dexter and Dee Dee standing in what seemed to be a field of flowers. The drawing had Dexter sporting a big silly smile he’s sure he’s never worn before. The boy genius only recalled once or twice when his reckless sister had apologized for her mayhem, but these instances were so far and in-between Dexter usually forgot about them. Then the ginger had spotted something out of the corner of his eye; a plate of his mother’s chocolate chip cookies with a little glass of milk.

Dexter looked back down at the drawing his sister made, and felt the muscles around his mouth curl into a tiny smile. Maybe he’d go see Dee Dee and perhaps join her for whatever ludicrous game she was engaged in at the moment.

After he was done with his work, of course.


End file.
